Here are Winners of LaunchLab’s Knowledge Acceleration Program

The South Africa-based LaunchLab has announced winners of its Knowledge Acceleration Program (KAP). LaunchLab is a business incubator running at the Stellenbosch University, South Africa.

The KAP competition kicked off last year and ran through 14 weeks of action-learning entrepreneurship development program geared towards equipping the participants with business acumen, planning, and managerial skills.

The content for the Knowledge Acceleration Program (KAP) was provided by the Center of Entrepreneurship of Regent University in Virginia, USA. The participants in the competition, some of whom were winners of the ATTACQ Retail Innovation Challenge, were under the mentorship and coaching of accredited members of the Mentors and Business Coaches International (MBCI). The lessons being coached to the participants included how to make good plans, and key managerial aspects of business.

The program concluded with a Pitching Final Event that took place on March 29th at the Nedbank Stellenbosch University LaunchLab. The pitch event saw four of the budding entrepreneurs pitch their idea in front of a live audience. Three winners emerged from the pitch event:

Ø Drive-Buy: a digital driver thru for Retail Stores

Ø SwiftPay: a RFID inventory tracking and Queue eliminator system

Ø Visibiliti Insight: a platform for tracking revenue trends and make recommendations

The three winners will move to the next stage of the competition, the Countdown Program, which is a pre-accelerator program geared towards getting businesses ready for accelerators. This stage entails getting incubation support from the LaunchLab and its partners over the four months.

The support accorded to the businesses is aimed at helping them launch and grow further other business ideas. ATTACQ will also continue giving support to the winners, with a view of investing further in them.

“It is encouraging to see corporates like ATTACQ engaging in grassroots startups like these companies. ATTACQ is already working with one of them and is opening the doors wide for the other two. We have already seen some hypotheses debunked and pivots made, which is why we facilitate these partnerships. We’re excited for the successes that come from the next phase,” said Brandon Paschal, the Incubation Manager at the LaunchLab.